


blurry: how the world should look without her

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Abduction Arc, F/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 12:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10617279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: He thinks he loves her a little.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Original post: https://how-i-met-your-mulder.tumblr.com/post/152270659018/can-you-please-write-a-prompt-with-secret-love

_We keep behind closed doors  
Every time I see you, I die a little more - _ **Secret Love Song, Little Mix**

He thinks he loves her a little when she comes to Arecibo for him. Even though he’d had absolutely no reason to, he’d occasionally doubted her devotion to him, to the truth. He’d never been more wrong. She doesn’t even believe what he believed, but she still crossed the ocean for him, their partnership spanning continents now. She follows him through the crash of the woods, pursued by the military and what seems like a thousand people, all against them. They get a last minute flight, and his pulse doesn’t stop pounding until they leave the ground. After everything, after he put her career in jeopardy and got her stuck in quarantine for a month, after she’s finally broken away from the office of the FBI’s most unwanted, he can’t let her die because of him. 

They talk for an hour or so before Scully starts slipping off. Mulder stares at the tape in his lap, turning it over and over in his hands, instead of watching her. She falls asleep and her head lolls against his shoulder. He thinks about kissing her, right on the corner of her mouth. 

* * *

They meet in random places - on a park bench, in storage closets. Anything to keep talking. They play a game of Go, Fish over the phone at one in the morning.

“You know you’re my best friend, right?” he mutters one night into the phone, half-drunk on fatigue.

He half expects her to make some quip, but instead she murmurs, “I know. You’re mine,” into the speaker. He would tease her if he was more awake and if he didn’t miss her so much. 

_She was jealous of Krycek_ , he remembers as he finally drifts off, her sleep-breathing already on the other end, and he smiles in spite of himself.

* * *

He can barely hold it together when she is taken, her blood and broken glass strewn across her living room and the lights from the sirens reflecting off of unshed tears in her mother’s eyes. He wants to shout and punch a hole in her wall and hunt down Barry. But somehow, he manages. Manages to hold it together, to find her, to save her. 

(Some part of him screams that he should’ve seen it coming, since the man told him that they’d never been in more danger. Should’ve saved her. This should’ve never happened.)

His stomach twists of the picture of Scully in the trunk, the fear on her face, both at the confirmation that she is alive and the sheer horror of seeing her restrained and battered. He rationalizes that Barry can’t mean to kill her, that his intentions are probably similar to his intentions for the doctor, to give her to the aliens. And he knows he can’t let that happen. Not again. He tells himself that it won’t happen again the entire drive to Skyland Mountain. That he won’t let it happen. 

So of course it happens, and she vanishes in a blinding light before he can get to her. Hours later, the only lead he has is dead and everyone’s still looking for a body. Everyone thinks that she is dead.

His hands shake the entire drive down the mountain.

* * *

He does the only thing he can think of: he thinks like Scully. 

He’s been looking for these men or beings for years and has barely found a trace. He can practically hear her voice telling him to rule out all possible loose ends first. So he drives to Skyland Mountain for a straight week and searches every inch of it, on the off chance that Duane Barry really did just leave her somewhere. The idea makes him nauseous, but not as nauseous as the thought of her being held by the things who took his sister and never gave her back. 

She isn’t there. He waits anyway.

He puts out an APB on any women matching her description in the US. The major news channels run the story a few times, but give it up when there’s no evidence. He has the Gunmen monitor hospital records on Jane Does, suspicious activity that sounds like it is in any way related. He spends most of his time in his regained office just sitting by the phone. Typing and retyping her file, gaining evidence. Reading through previous files for any similar cases. Anything to keep his mind from wandering back to her. He starts wearing her glasses, even though he is probably stretching them out (at least he can look forward to her scolding him for it, someday) and her prescription isn’t as strong as his so that everything is blurry. _Maybe that’s what the world should look like without her,_ he thinks. He sleeps at his desk or on his couch, holding on to her cross so tight that it leaves an imprint on his hand.

He misses her more than he’s missed anyone since Samantha. He’s heard stories of amputees still feeling pain in their missing limbs. That’s what losing Scully feels like, like the constant phantom pain of her being gone. It aches like the bullet wound he’d gotten in his leg, a constant pain, except this one doesn’t dull with time. It almost hurts more every day that he walks into their office without her. 

* * *

In the third month, there is still no news, and Mrs. Scully asks him to come with her to pick out a tombstone. He goes, even though everything in him is screaming _she’s still alive_. He’ll respect her mother’s wishes, but he knows he’ll never stop looking for her. (The sight of her tombstone makes him sick to his stomach, though.)

The next night, the _very_ next night, like some kind of bizarre poetry, he gets a call from Mrs. Scully. “Dana’s at Georgetown Medical Center,” she says. 

Mulder’s heart skips a beat and his fingers tighten around the phone; Mrs. Scully sounds much more upset than he would’ve expected. Something’s wrong. “How is she?” 

“It’s bad, Fox. You’d better get down here.”

The sight of her buried in tubes, half dead, is what does it to him, what finally lets loose the rage he’s been holding inside for three months. She’s dying, and it’s his fault; she’s dying, and there’s nothing he can do to save her, it’s too late. All he can do is sit by her bedside and hope that she lives.

Looking into her pale, still face that could be mistaken for death at first glance, he realizes that he does love her. Has loved her since she laughed up at him with rain streaking down her face like tears, or since she’d defended him to a group of her friends, or since she’d ditched her date to go to the Smithsonian with him, or since she’d checked his neck for parasites in a storage closet in Alaska, or since he’d woken up in the hospital with an irrefutable pain in his leg and her small, chilled fingers intertwined with his, or since all the times he’s almost lost her, leading up to this time, this awful, climatic time, or, or, or… He can’t pinpoint it specifically. He just knows, without a doubt, that he loves her.

Melissa knows, too. “Why is it so much easier for you to run around trying to get even than just expressing to her how you feel?” she snaps. He’s ready to take their revenge and run, but her words full-on stop him. She’s dying, and if he doesn’t go now, then the last time he ever saw her will be when her blood was taken. He didn’t even accept the invitation to go when they pulled the plug. The last conversation they ever had is about Duane Barry. The last thing he’ll ever hear her say is his name. 

He goes to her bed and holds her hand. He wants to believe it’ll be enough to bring her back, but nothing happens. She wakes hours later, when he’s at home and expecting for news of her death.

He doesn’t mind.

* * *

He’s going to tell her that he loves her. He rationalizes that there is no harm it can do. The worse she can do is say that she doesn’t feel the same way - and even then, at least he will know she’s alive. At least he will know she’s safe. 

She’s been home for a few days now. He hasn’t seen her since that night in the hospital. He hadn’t wanted to intrude. Melissa called him yesterday, and said, “So, my sister hasn’t heard from you” in lieu of a greeting.

“Hi, Melissa,” he’d replied with a sigh and a small smile, leaning against the counter. Someday he’ll tell Scully he likes her sister, despite her annoying edge. 

“So, what, you can wave a gun around and yell when she’s dying, but you can’t give her a call when she’s living?”

“I didn’t want to intrude,” he said. He wishes it was Scully’s voice on the other end of the phone; he is starved for it after so many years. “But I have been wondering. How is she doing?”

“Good,” Melissa said wearily. “Fighting with my mom through every step of recovery. You’d think Dana only got this way after medical school - doctors make the worst patients and all - but she’s been this way ever since she was a kid. She never wanted bed rest when she’d get the flu.”

He’d smiled.

Melissa sighed again, obviously very put out. “Look, Fox. I know you’re in love with my sister.” 

_You don’t know anything_ , he wants to snap, defensive. _How could you tell?_ he wants to ask, vulnerable. _How do you think she feels?_ He settles for silence. 

“I think you should tell her,” Melissa said. And then she’d hung up. Mulder suspects she has a certain flair for dramatic exits. 

So he’s thought it through, and he’s going to tell her. If only for an excuse to talk to her again. To hear her voice for longer than a minute in her hospital rooms with machines and her mother and sister listening. 

He’s halfway out the door before X enters, shoving the door roughly so that it hits the wall with a bang. He looks around the apartment. “Nice, what you’ve done with the place,” he says sarcastically. Mulder hasn’t cleaned since They destroyed his apartment.

“What are you doing here?” he snaps back. 

“What are _you_ doing here? I made it clear what you needed to do. And now you’re going to dig further. You’re digging her grave, you know, Mulder. She got lucky this time.”

He feels slightly sick. “You’ve been watching me?”

X snorts. “Please. She just disappeared and came back half dead, and you still haven’t learned a thing! They took her when she was just your partner. What do you think They’d do if she was your lover?”

He’s caught him at his most vulnerable, like a bullet shattering his ribs. “We can’t…”

“You shouldn’t even tell her,” X says. “The fact that you have few attachments as you grow closer to Them makes you invincible. If They know, They’ll use it to destroy you both. I assume you want to continue the search for your sister?”

“Yes,” he gets out with some difficulty.

X nods curtly, and turns to leave. “You didn’t take my last advice, Mulder. I suggest you take this advice. To save the both of us.”

* * *

He cleans.

Every shard that hits his skin reminds him of what he has to do. 

* * *

Maggie opens the door and smiles up at him. “Hi, Fox.”

“Mom, is that Mulder?” Scully calls from somewhere behind her. 

“Yes,” she calls back. “I think I’ll step out and get some shopping done so you two can talk.” He honest-to-god thinks she winks at him as she brushes past. If he’s really that obvious, then they’re fucked. 

Scully is looking extremely grouchy in a sweatshirt and covered with a blanket on the couch, flipping channels. “I feel like I’m three,” she says. “My mom has been hovering like crazy. And I’ve mentioned a million times that I’m feeling fine!”

Mulder sits tentatively on the couch. “That’s good,” he says. “That you’re feeling fine.” With that look on her face, he can almost pretend that she hates him for what happened. This would all be easier if she did. 

Scully flips off the TV and sets the remote on the coffee table. “So Skinner called,” she says. “He says we have the X Files back.” 

She’s smiling. He wants to grimace. “About that, Scully,” he says. “I’ve been thinking maybe you should stay at Quantico.” 

The smile fades off of her face so fast that he almost thinks he imagined it. “I’m _fine_ , Mulder,” she snaps, hand picking at the blanket in her lap. “I’ll be ready for active duty soon.”

“You got abducted because of me,” he says softly. 

“We don’t know what happened to me. The X Files are my only chance to find out.” She crosses her arms. 

“I’ll look,” he says. “I swear.”

“That’s not enough.” She stares at the lining of the blanket, won’t meet his eyes. “I thought you missed it,” she mutters. “Working together, I mean.”

“I did.” The words spill out of him like a waterfall, like the tide. “But I don’t want anything else to happen to you. Losing you like that…” 

She looks up at him, reaches out to take his hand. “You didn’t lose me,” she whispers. “You saved me.” 

Her hand is warmer than it was in the hospital, a live thing between his fingers. He thinks about kissing it, telling her because maybe she’ll say yes, walking away and never looking back. He thinks about his sister, everything that he owes Samantha. 

“Please, Scully,” he tries one more time.

She squeezes his hand before pulling away. “I’ll be back on the X Files, Mulder. It’s non negotiable.” 

He nods. Part of him is relieved. The other part wants to shove her away with both hands.

_You can have her but you can never tell her you love her._

It’s a devil’s bargain.


End file.
